Double Click on Love

WE were at my favorite spot on the coast: Cape Perpetua; a place that could whip up my froth and suspend it excitedly above the crashing waves.

THE OCEAN spent its day shopping in Japan. It pulled all the water along with it exposing rubbery cities of wonder. Green business towers alternated with dancing tentacle trees. Red, orange and purple star-shaped manhole covers reached across mussel-lined road beds. Greedy barnacles slurped their soup at hillside bistros. Tiny crabs paraded from neighborhood to neighborhood, skittish about the traffic. I drank it all in until my eye finally said “too much for one day;” the end of many city scapes.

THE SUN shone—sparkled even. The campground spilled over with cars and tents, and friends, food, drink, laughter, ease, and beauty. It was my birthday and a magical weekend event.

I LAY DOWN in the tall grass of a steep hill. He’d been my lover for most of a year, and when he pressed on top of me, his eyes walked into mine. He stepped right through my pupils with an audible click. Years of happiness and partnership, fun and romance followed. We grew up, fed our careers, a baby, our friends and our families. We had it all for a shining decade or so. Years later the moth holes in that fiber were apparent, but going forward it had been mostly smooth and shiny for long stretches.

TWENTY TWO YEARS LATER my heart finally slammed shut with another click. Shaken, betrayed, defied, and defeated, love finally stomped its foot and turned on its splintered heel, limping away. There had been love: world-class love. By the time we knew it was over, there wasn’t even enough dust for fingerprints.